Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may be able to prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable, and perfect. Romans 12-2. This is resistance and reformation on the fight-lath-feest network. Though he was best known as a world-renowned author, preacher, and philanthropist, the bookshops of London knew Charles Haddon Spurgeon as a voracious reader and an avid collector. He was the most famous preacher in the world for most of the 19th century, in 1854, just four years after his conversion. Charles Spurgeon then just barely 20 years old became the pastor of London's famed New Park Street Church. Formerly, pastored by the famous Puritans, John Gill and John Ripon. The young preacher was an immediate success. The congregation quickly outgrew their building. They moved to Exeter Hall, then to Surrey Music Hall. These venues Spurgeon frequently preached to audiences numbering in the tens of thousands, all in the days before electronic amplification. In 1861, the congregation moved permanently to the newly constructed Metropolitan Tabernacle, and it quickly became the largest congregation in the world. When he arrived in London, there were just under 200 members in the congregation. When he arrived in London, there were just under 200 members in the congregation. Nearly 40 years later, after his lifetime of labor, the number had increased to nearly 6,000. With his rhetorical passion, literary eloquence in stalwart orthodoxy, Spurgeon regularly drew standing room-only crowds, including the likes of Prime Minister William Gladstone, Lord Chief Justice Campbell, Earl Gray, the Lord Mayor and Sheriff's of London, Earl Russell, Lord Alfred Pedget, Lord Panmore, Earl Schaffsbury, and the Duchess of Sutherland, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Livingstone. Several members of the Royal Family, innumerable members of Parliament, as well as throngs of the common folk of London, to both the Sunday and weekday services at the church. His popularity caused great demand for both his printed sermons, at which widely circulated in almost countless volumes, as well as his additional works. In one year, a quarter of a million copies of his sermon tracks were distributed in the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge alone. A number of prominent American newspapers printed the sermons every week and called him the greatest preacher of the age. Over the years, Spurgeon published nearly 4,000 sermons and over a hundred other books on a wide variety of subjects. He was also the founder of more than 60 philanthropic institutions, including orphanages, coal-porterage societies, schools, colleges, clinics, and hospitals. In addition, he established more than 20 mission churches and dozens of Sunday and ragged schools throughout England. But in the midst of all of this busyness in his life and ministry, he always found time to read books where his most constant companions and bookstores were his most regular haunts. He was born in the little Essex village of Calvitan in 1834. Both his father and grandfather were pastors, and so he was raised around books, reading, and piety. As a youngster, he began his lifelong habit of diligent and unending reading. Typically, he read six books every week and was able to remember what he had read and where he had read it many years later. He particularly loved old books. He claimed in his autobiography that before he was 10 years old, he preferred to go into his grandfather's study and pull down an old Puritan classic and read rather than to go outside and play with friends. As he grew older, his passion for books and the little shops that sold them remain unabated. Each day, Spurgeon would scour the newspapers to find when an antiquarian bookshop might be selling certain books. He would then beat a hasty path to the shop to purchase the treasure. Or, if he was too busy that day with appointments, he would send his secretary to buy the book. In time, his personal library numbered more than 12,000 volumes. The books were all shelved in Spurgeon's study at Westwood, his family home. The oldest book of the collection was a commentary on the book of Psalms by the infamous inquisitor Cardinal I de Tocamanda. Written in Latin and published in Rome in 1476, Spurgeon found it on the bottom shelf of one of his favorite bookshops, just off the royal mile in Edinburgh. The acquired magnificent set of the complete works of Thomas Chalmers signed numbered and in mint condition. He also had rare copies of the commentaries by Matthew Henry John Calvin, Adam Clark, Robert Jamison, Isaac Williams, and Nicholas Bifield. The hymns of Isaac Watts, the compilations of John Rippen, Samuel John and Charles Wesley, these were also collected by him, resulting in an outstanding accumulation of hymns written between the 17th and the 19th centuries. And of course, the Spurgeon was not merely a collector. He was utilitarian if anything. He viewed his books as the tools of his trade, and the shops where he found them were essentially his hardware stores. As a result, the books were used. They were hardly museum pieces, despite their scarcity or value. They were the natural extensions of his work and ministry. He declared, my books are my tools. They serve as my counsel, my consolation, and my comfort. They are my source of wisdom and the font of my education. They are my friends and my delight. They are my surety when all else is awry that I have set my confidence in the substantial things of truth and right. The great library he collected over his lifetime was kept intact after his death in 1892. Mrs. Spurgeon wanted to retain the library intact as a memorial to her husband. He hoped ultimately to have both westwood, but when she died in 1903, the Spurgeon's twin sons, Thomas and Charles, decided not only did they have to sell the home, but they also had to sell the larger part of their father's library. The idea of a museum dedicated to their father seemed financially unfeasible at the time. They advertised in English newspapers that the books were for sale. Then over the next two years, the collection was sold off piecemeal. Most of the rarest volumes went to individual investors. Then in 1905, a trustee of William Jewel College secured the remaining 5,000 volumes for the little Baptist College in rural Missouri, where they remained neglected, moldering and forgotten, until Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City rescued the books and at last created a Spurgeon Museum. It is a marvelous tribute to a ministry, to a love for books, and to a passion for bookshops, enough a world away from where the great men lived and worked and read. Perhaps it will lay an enduring foundation for a new day of both resistance and reformation. I'm George Grant on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. For more information and for resources, go to GeorgeMan.net.